Third Text, 2014 Vol. 28, No. 2, 123– 136, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2014.885628 Aesthetic Responsibility A Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko on the Transformative Avant-Garde Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Marc James Le´ger In spring 2013 Krzysztof Wodiczko and Greg Sholette contributed an interview essay to my curated book project The Idea of the Avant Garde – And What It Means Today, which brings together fifty artists and intellectuals to discuss the contemporary significance of the avant- garde and the possibility of contemporary avant-garde compositions.1 Wodiczko subsequently wrote ‘The Transformative Avant-Garde: A Manifest of the Present’ in the summer of 2013. I met with him to discuss his thoughts on the ‘transformative avant-garde’ as a kind of update to his 1987 essay ‘Strategies of Public Address: Which Media, Which Publics?’.2 The following is the transcription of our subsequent 1. Gregory Sholette and Skype conversation on 8 September 2013. Krzysztof Wodiczko, ‘Liberate the Avant Garde?’, in Marc James Le´ger, ed, Marc James Le´ger In his Theory of the Avant-Garde of 1962, Renato The Idea of the Avant Poggioli defined the avant-garde as an ‘anti-tradition tradition’.3 It Garde – And What It seems here that he opted for one side of the possible equation, missing Means Today, forthcoming. Thanks to Gregory Sholette the chance to define it in Hegelian terms as an anti-anti-tradition, both for his participation in The anti-traditional – the way the Situationists defined themselves against Idea of the Avant Garde. the exhausted strategies of Surrealism – and anti-anti-traditional, defin- 2. Krzysztof Wodiczko, ing themselves as not the enemies of Surrealism, but as the enemies of ‘Strategies of Public Address: Which Media, the division of labour – in other words, as a new instance of avant- Which Publics?’, in Hal garde cultural expression. From this point of view, your idea that we, Foster, ed, Discussions in the generation of the seventies onward, liberated ourselves from the Contemporary Culture, New Press, New York, avant-gardes may have less to do with artistic avant-gardes than with 1987, pp 41 –45 the association of avant-garde movements with revolutionary politics. 3. See Renato Poggioli, The Is it not the leftist Marxist tool kit – teleology, totality, dialectical Theory of the Avant-Garde overcoming, alienation, political vanguard, etc – that postmodernists (1962), Gerald Fitzgerald, wanted to get away from – and maybe also some feminist and postcolo- trans, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, nial idea of patrilineal succession or Eurocentric modernism? I would say Massachusetts, 1968. then that the resurgence of leftist macro-political theorizing, the current # 2014 Third Text  124 Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Lucien Kroll, La Me´me´, Medical Faculties at l’Universite´ Catholique de Louvain, Woluwe´-Saint-Lambert, Brussels, Belgium, 1970, photo # Audrey-UCL interest in workerism, anarchism, alter-global anti-capitalism and Marxist political economy is one way that today’s interest in the avant- garde can make sense to us. I would even oppose this to a specifically art-historical recuperation, as noticed in the development of new research networks on the avant-garde, which sometimes seem more intent on squaring avant-garde genealogies with post-structural academe and crea- tive industries than with cultural contestation. Seeing this resurgence in terms of the links between leftist political articulation and cultural articu- lation – the politicization of culture – allows us to say, as you put it, ‘long live the avant-garde’, as against those who, according to John Roberts, see the avant-garde as a superseded historical category – those who represent a neo-modernist and romantic fatalism or a neo-postmodern cultural nihilism.4 Was it not too easy a way out, as you put it, because it assumed that leftist articulation was superseded by the anti-foundational postmodern ‘no man’s land’ beyond left and right? Krzysztof Wodiczko I agree with you, but that’s how it looks from outside, when you are looking down from a helicopter! I think that there is a possi- bility that something else happened – that an intellectual avant-garde . . . 4. John Roberts, ‘Revolutionary Pathos, and I use this term when I’m thinking about people like Gilles Deleuze Negation, and the and Fe´lix Guattari, when they wrote Capitalism and Schizophrenia, or Suspensive Avant-Garde’, people like Donna Haraway, with her ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, from a fem- New Literary History, vol 41, no 4, Autumn 2010, pp inist-socialist-technological perspective. In terms of generations, Lucien 717 – 730 Kroll was working at the same time as Deleuze – in the same area,  125 country and maybe even city – and was creating a new kind of architec- ture. He wrote a book called The Architecture of Complexity, a kind of manifesto.5 I think that between Kroll and Deleuze the concepts of ‘rhizome’ and ‘nomadology’ have a direct connection, but Kroll worked directly with people. It was an actual, practical and artistic answer to the avant-garde, not a philosophical answer, yet, without being conscious of it he was doing Deleuze. He was the first to use computers to work with future users and inhabitants of his building projects, and he modelled interiors according to the discussions that he was having with them. It was the very first time that architecture and buildings were designed with the use of modern technology and with people. They were designed by these people. So we’re talking about creating a non-striated space to create conditions for people to act as if it was smooth space. Kroll was therefore making a nomadic, or nomadological work. Other architects, who were reading Jacques Derrida or Deleuze, started to make Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 buildings that looked like they were moving, like sculptures that were symbolically articulating the ideas of Deleuze, but they were not nomadic. But Lucien Kroll was actually part of that avant-garde, and so what I’m saying is that things were happening with some artists and architects who were not just reading theory. People like Kroll were doing a kind of deconstruction as construction, as proactive work with other people. That tradition of Lucien Kroll can be linked to something contempor- ary like the work of Atelier Van Lieshout, who, in 2001, built Freestate AVL-Ville, an alternative city in Rotterdam.6 Under the rubric of art everything is possible, and so Van Lieshout went back to a kind of classic avant-garde, using artistic autonomy, to take advantage of this autonomy and disappear into life. We could also talk about projects made with immigrants – as in the work of Tania Bruguera – that are con- nected with some concepts and ideas of the philosophical avant-garde of the 1970s.7 This you could connect to some of Julia Kristeva’s ideas, for instance, in Strangers to Ourselves.8 So what happened between then and today? Maybe what happened is that some artists forgot that they are artists. They were reading decon- struction, but they became artists who translate ideas into forms rather 5. Lucien Kroll, The than being artists who joined their philosophical colleagues by making Architecture of Complexity, Peter Blundell Jones, trans, practical, transformative work. There has always been an analytical, criti- BT Batsford, London, 1986. cal approach that is parallel to a practical and proactive, transformative See also the Kroll website: approach, which is the tradition we have from the history of the avant- http://homeusers.brutele.be/ kroll/, accessed 15 gardes. Maybe artists were not conscious of this approach during the September 2013. time of the ‘critique of representation’. But during that time there was 6. See http://www. also the Guerrilla Girls – there were groups who were very active. For ateliervanlieshout.com, example, Las Agencias, or The Agencies, which took place in the accessed 15 September 2013. spring and early summer of 2001, was a very important project. I was part of it with my workshop in conjunction with the Preˆt a` re´volter 7. See http://www. taniabruguera.com/cms, project on fashion for safety and visibility during anti-globalization dem- accessed 15 September onstrations. The core of Preˆt a` re´volter was a team of designers who were 2013. closely connected to social movements, who armed themselves symboli- 8. Julia Kristeva, Strangers to cally and also physically against police attacks, and also against media Ourselves (1988), Leon S misrepresentation. They created a counter-representation, combined Roudiez, trans, Columbia University Press, New York, with action and design. This is what I remember from the early counter- 1991 points to globalism that were advanced by artists and social movements. I  126 Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Atelier Van Lieshout, AVL-Ville, 2001, photo and copyright: Atelier Van Lieshout think they were very much affected by the writings of people like Jacques Rancie`re, but also by Italian Marxism, which was very influential at that time. MJL I would say, though, that some things have changed along with the rise of the anti-globalization movement. Before this there was not only a prohibition on the avant-garde – viewed by postmodernists as part of the meta-narrative of class struggle and by post-structuralists as a masculin- ism – there was a prohibition on the prohibition itself; it went without saying that this topic was proscribed. Now, with the resurgence of leftist theorizing, including Italian Marxism, I think that the subject of avant-gardism returns, even if only as something that people want to dis- tinguish themselves from. There is often among activist artists the view that there can no longer be an avant-garde, that we’re post-Marxist, post-political, and that we can no longer think of aesthetics in terms of superstructural effectivity, but that the superstructure is now folded into the social relations and modes of post-industrial production, accord- ing to new media and new methods of communication – the new aspects of flexibilized labour, risk society, and so on. These are the smooth forms we are expected to work in, for which ‘there is no outside’. I prefer to say that there is no outside to contradiction. KW In the context of Las Agencias, the MACBA Museum in Barcelona staged a series of lectures, and one of the projects they were going for  127 was a New Productivism!9 So they called for a New Productivism, but they didn’t call for a new avant-garde. Maybe in a very traditionalist Marxist way, they were hoping to aid and inspire the real avant-garde to move on – the ‘chosen’ class in charge of the future! MJL Yes, the class that dissolves class society. KW Right, but I don’t think they would immediately use the word avant- garde, in general, but maybe they would discuss it. Avant-garde was not mentioned, but in fact, they wanted to go back to Productivism and not Constructivism; they wanted to embrace the real force behind change, like ‘illegal’ immigrants from Africa, by supporting and protecting their landings on the beaches in Spain. They were talking about Productivism on the one hand, and on the other about the G8 and globalization. It was an interesting moment, as if the avant-garde was brought back, without Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 shame. So what you are saying is that there is something else going on, maybe, psychoanalytically speaking, a kind of fear of an artistic avant- garde, and so of aesthetic responsibility. Yesterday I spoke with Thomas Hirschhorn, at his Gramsci Monument in the Bronx, and it became very clear to me that he is present- ing himself as an artist, without any doubt – and this is my interpret- ation – but it looks like this kind of self-conscious self-presentation as an artist actually helped him to gain the confidence of the people who brought life to his project, because they trust an artist more than an 9. The seminar on The New activist.10 With an activist they would probably be nervous about some Productivisms was kind of manipulation. So in fact aesthetics can help in these kinds of organized by Jorge Ribalta and took place at the situations. Through the function of autonomy, to come to Peter Bu¨rger, Museu d’Art he manages to have a complete engagement, and it allows other people Contemporani de to take over and inhabit his autonomy.11 Barcelona (MACBA) on 27 and 29 March 2009. Now the residents of Forest Houses in the Bronx are dismantling the See Jorge Ribalta, Monument and I suppose they are very conscious that it became, really, ‘Mediation and their project – one hundred per cent their own project. It’s his project Construction of Publics: The MACBA Experience’, and their project, and so it’s a kind of transitional object – to speak Republicart, April 2004, like Donald Winnicott, the English psychoanalyst. And so the question available at http:// of whether the Monument was created by Hirschhorn and given to the republicart.net/disc/ institution/ribalta01_en. Bronx residents, or whether it was created by them, should not even be htm. See also Marcelo formulated. So the aesthetic aspect, as with Atelier Van Lieshout, is Expo´sito, ‘The New about building things, and making things, about discussing things, Productivisms’, Transversal, September about finding forms for things, and he, Hirschhorn, took responsibility 2010, available at http:// for those aspects, and so maybe the whole ‘art’ business is too difficult eipcp.net/transversal/ 0910/exposito/en, to embrace or acknowledge, I’m not sure. The historical avant-garde accessed 15 September was definitely taking responsibility for its art, but they did so as if it 2013. was non-art, art as non-art, transformed into life. They would take full 10. See the Gramsci responsibility – they knew who they were, in order to disappear into Monument website: http:// life. They first understood their special abilities, special tradition, gramsci-monument.com, accessed 15 September history, knowhow, and they were offering this, in their own way, and 2013. so this is the act of actually immersing yourself in life. And then of 11. Peter Bu¨rger, Theory of the course there were also the so-called fiascos. Avant-Garde (1974), The Atelier Van Lieshout project in Rotterdam lasted only one year I Michael Shaw, trans, think, maybe less than one year. And Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, lasted only six months. Perhaps such projects bring up this fear of art Minnesota, 1984 among many people who are engaged in art activism and social projects.  128 Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Thomas Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument, 2013, school supplies distribution by Forest Resident Association, Forest Houses, Bronx, New York, courtesy Dia Art Foundation, photo: Romain Lopez 12. See Claire Bishop, Maybe they are not so sure about themselves as artists, and maybe they do ‘Antagonism and not want to call themselves artists, and so it’s bad for them to go into Relational Aesthetics’, October 110, fall 2004, pp avant-garde territory. Maybe Claire Bishop is somehow on the right 51 – 79; Bishop, ed, track in tracing this kind of ambivalence towards art and the lack of Participation, Whitechapel, London; full commitment to aesthetic practice.12 Maybe she understands that MIT Press, Cambridge, there is something there, even if I don’t agree with the general tone of Massachusetts, 2006; her concern for the deficit of evaluative aesthetic criteria. But there is a Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the good reason for seeking such criteria and to not use only ethical and pol- Politics of Spectatorship, itical ones. In my 1984 article on the ‘De-Incapacitation of the Avant- Verso, London, 2012. Garde’, I called for critical re-actualization of the art of the artistic 13. Krzysztof Wodiczko, ‘For avant-garde and not only of its ethics and politics of social engagement.13 the De-Incapacitation of the Avant-Garde’, Parallelogramme, vol 9, no MJL It seems that because social practice, or socially engaged art, is 4, 1984, pp 22 –25; moving away from museum practices, and therefore moving away from Krzysztof Wodiczko and objects towards processes, making post-studio kinds of work – in the Karl Beveridge, ‘West/ East: The Depoliticization sense that it was moving more in the direction of community art and prac- of Art’, FUSE, March tices that resemble social and political work – there’s a worry that art 1980, pp 140 –143. See institutions and critics do not recognize these as legitimate art practices, also Marc James Le´ger, ‘For the De-Incapacitation and so there’s a concern that art criticism needs to develop method- of Community Art ologies, as you mention, that are able to account for the new practices.  129 Practice’, Journal of However, in some cases, the ways to keep art in the picture are a bit ata- Aesthetics and Protest 6, vistic, and so rather than drawing on the theoretical sophistication that 2008, pp 286 –299. was enabled by avant-garde predecessors, one turns to Kantian autonomy as a default, or to Friedrich Schiller, which are both of course very formal and non-materialist approaches to artistic production. It seems to me that, with respect to the limitations of aesthetic idealism, the historical avant-gardes had already developed a sophistication that is in fact inscribed into new practices, which Bishop has at least attempted to show. Yet for artists themselves there is some kind of defensiveness about the politics of these avant-garde legacies, perhaps due to the need to be recognized as adequately contemporary and so to be supported by conservative institutions. KW Yes, because there has been a sense of feeling rejected or misunder- stood by art institutions and so artists reject those institutions, together Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 with the idea of art or the word art and the avant-garde. So it’s like: ‘You don’t want us, we don’t want you! We didn’t want you anyway, from the beginning!’ There is this kind of psychological projection. So it’s true that only now art institutions are kind of waking up and trying to re-appropriate what they call social practice art, which has become fashionable. Research has in fact proved that there was this schism where the dirty word ‘art’ was associated with art institutions and museums and there has been criticism of the ways that social practice was excluded for a long time, being treated as not artistic enough, or not worth putting into textbooks. Now, suddenly, it’s all there in a huge book by Claire Bishop! But it kind of came back, maybe with some pollution; it’s coming back from the same art world. MJL Yes, and there is also the Creative Time Summit and Nato Thomp- son’s book Living as Form.14 Perhaps I could ask you at this point to say a few things about your Arc de Triomphe World Institute for the Abolition of War. In your conclusion to your Manifest on the Transformative Avant-Garde you say that you worry that you may not be avant-garde enough. If I may say so, you have been one of our most challenging and consistently fearless artists. Especially recently, you have challenged all of us with your World Institute, a work that is exceptionally visionary 14. Nato Thomspson, ed, in its ambition, in part because it is a project that is possible to realize but Living as Form: Socially that at that the same time is immense in its scale and scope. I would like to Engaged Art From 1991 – 2011, Creative Time, help you realize this Institute by suggesting, as you say in your essay, that New York; MIT Press, the world is too complicated to work alone. In your 2007 ‘Response to Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012 the October questionnaire’, you mention artists who focus on the methods of war against war, and an important aspect of this task is to 15. Krzysztof Wodiczko, ‘Response to the October break the ‘cultural economy of silence’ around war as perhaps one of Questionnaire: ‘In what the more ideological aspects of the secondary traumas transmitted by ways have artists, war.15 In this sense, all of us who have not gone to war are nevertheless academics and cultural institutions responded to war veterans since we all have to live with the guilt and the consequences the US-led invasions and of war. occupations of Iraq?’, I know that you’ve presented this proposal on a number of occasions October 123, winter 2008, pp 172 –179 and you’ve published a book on it.16 Could you say a few things, not so much about the project itself in terms of its description, but about the 16. Krzysztof Wodiczko, The Abolition of War, Black project in terms of what has happened since you first proposed it – Dog, London, 2012 how it’s been received, what you think could be done in order to  130 realize the project, what has transpired so far, what more you could hope to do, and also, what you think of the idea that this project could use the collaboration of the art world as a whole, which is capable of coming together, as we’ve seen with the reactions to government attacks on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Steve Kurtz. Since the so-called ‘war on terror’ began in 2001 and 2003, and even going back to the 1980s with Bush Sr, we have been in a falsely created constant state of emer- gency, and of course now we’re facing a situation in Syria that the US would like to spread to Iran, the rest of the Middle East, to possibly Russia, and China, with its co-called ‘Pivot to Asia’, etc. KW I agree, maybe there could be some sort of coalition between artists and political activists, and maybe some members of social movements that are against war or for the abolition of war. Right now I don’t think I’ve achieved much – almost nothing. Yes, there is an interest among Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 some people from the art world, and some politicians and cultural officials, but when the project was proposed to be shown in the Palais de Tokyo it was rejected for various reasons. So it was only shown once with a modest presentation in a small gallery in Paris – the Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie, a significant but small gallery. Many people came to the opening, certainly, but time is moving on and there is not much happening. There is a plan to create some kind of foundation or association in support of it, so some names of people who may support this have been collected, but so far it hasn’t happened. But what you are saying is true – it should be happening, it must be done but I still don’t know how to do it. Maybe there is a need to create a better promotion and distribution of my recently published book The Abolition of War, which proposes, elaborates and argues for the project, because, so far, despite some coverage in art magazines, there is no strong interest and response to it. In terms of the abolition of anything, like the abolition of slavery for example, the groups that were fighting for abolition were very small. If you look back historically, it took a very long time – about 300 years – before slavery was abolished, starting with Quakers, actually, here in the American colonies. We’re talking about something more difficult than the legal abolition of war, which already exists in the various char- ters of the United Nations, and also in the Rome Statute and its review in Kampala – a more recent reinforcement of that Statute against the crime of wars of aggression. So we are legally getting close to it, but in terms of the culture of war we are very far from connecting with the new inter- national rules. In that sense artists have a very difficult task here – to chal- lenge French culture, the culture of nationalism in Europe, in the United States, and everywhere. So there would have to be some movement against the culture of war, and this project should perhaps be one of the elements of the ‘equipment’, in the struggle to dismantle the culture of war, to create new institutions, and new structures, to move towards a new culture of what I call un-war. But the project itself, when it is presented, doesn’t seem to be very effective. And so the Arc de Triomphe World Institute for the Abolition of War has to become one of many projects that could be developed – on a pedagogical level, in textbooks, but also in terms of war memorials that are operating in our culture – in the direction of physical, literary and philosophical transformation.  131 Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Krzysztof Wodiczko, Arc de Triomphe World Institute for the Abolition of War, daytime street view, 2012, photo courtesy the artist and Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie, Paris MJL One of the few artworks that I’ve seen in the last little while, not only here in Montreal but anywhere else, in terms of art concerned about war was the exhibition last summer by the artist David Tomas called ‘Live 17. David Tomas, ed, Live Rightly, Die, Die . . . ’, a phrase taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Rightly, Die, Die . . . , Darkness, which is concerned with the figure of Kurtz, who, in the exhibition catalogue, Dazibao, Montreal, 2012. novel, is a figure of despotism who is at the same time a creation of all See also Marc Le´ger’s of Europe, the unconscious of Western culture expressed somewhere documentation of the else, in an African colony.17 The exhibition uses e-flux announcements exhibition and interview with Tomas at http:// as a way to revisit Tony Bennett’s idea of the ‘exhibitionary complex’, www.youtube.com/ where you have a Victorian culture of exhibitions, leisure and spectacle, watch?v=vYAcJJVeTvA, combined with the reality of a counter-space of state and police regu- accessed 15 September 2013. lation, which implies that if you don’t participate in the world of 18. Tony Bennett, ‘The leisure, if you reject the world of spectacle, or if you don’t share the Exhibitionary Complex’, same class privilege, you are or become potentially dangerous and there- New Formations 4, spring fore subject to disciplinary measures.18 Today we would complicate that 1988, pp 73 –102, available online at http:// by saying that we live in a society of control, where the opposition www.londonconsortium. between these two spaces – the exhibitionary and the carceral – is com/uploads/The% more fluid, so that even if we’re thinking in terms of rhizomatic struc- 20Exhibitionary% 20Complex.pdf, accessed tures, we’re still producing biopolitical control, which makes getting 15 September 2013. beyond the culture of war a bit more complicated in the sense that  132 there is a compulsion for people to look for ways to escape the institutional routes and to self-institute, to opt for autonomous grassroots spaces, against and outside established or constituted forms of power. All of this could make the Institute for the Abolition of War a somewhat more difficult project to realize, since some of the people who are actually capable of legitimizing such a project are institutionalized players. KW Well, in fact, without the signature of the French Prime Minister it will not work. So I will have to be much more clever. In fact, because the Ministry of Culture is so powerful, anything that is happening with that Ministry is radical in so far as it could cause Parliamentary debate. Cultural issues can become a matter of political injunction, disrupting the procedures of the Parliament by focusing on something urgent, for example, in relation to major memorials. So I think that in this case we need a kind of mixture of forces from both the top and the grassroots Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 and the middle, as was the case with the abolition of slavery. After all, it was a revolutionary government [in France], in 1848, a short-lived gov- ernment, that actually abolished slavery. Nobody else supported it. It was Victor Schœlcher, the Minister of Colonies, who did this. But it needed to be pushed to higher levels, through a long process, until finally there was the right government to actually do it, and afterwards it was very difficult to reverse. Of course there were attempts to reverse it. In fact the French Revolution abolished slavery but that was reversed by Napoleon. So there is always a danger that major acts can be reversed. That kind of process will never end but we need those acts – not only for the legal abolition of war, but for the legal abolition of the dissemination, propagation and per- petuation of beliefs and concepts and ideas that are linked to war. I think artists definitely could create a global coalition and push the European Parliament to do something about it, and then that, maybe, would in turn put pressure on national governments in Europe. MJL In terms of democratic politics and debate, you refer in your Mani- fest to Chantal Mouffe’s idea of agonism in the public sphere and the idea that democracy needs to be able to sustain disagreement – hegemonic articulations that do not seek to occupy the ‘empty space of power’. 19. Alain Badiou, The How would you argue this point in relation to the current resurgence Communist Hypothesis, of communist theorizing in the last decade or so, which of course is pre- David Macey and Steve Corcoran, trans, Verso, mised on a critique of state socialism? For thinkers like Slavoj Zˇizˇek and London, 2010; Slavoj Alain Badiou we’re now in a new phase of the communist hypothesis that Zˇizˇek, ‘The Communist Hypothesis’, in First as goes beyond the post-May 1968 generation of thinkers like Michel Fou- Tragedy, Then as Farce, cault, Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari.19 Verso, London, 2009, pp Zˇizˇek argues that we need to preserve the idea of communism, because, 86 – 157 among other things, the idea of democracy is easily recuperated by the 20. Slavoj Zˇizˇek, ‘Less Than right and because, he argues, we’re approaching dangerous times when Nothing: Slavoj Zˇizˇek in Conversation with we may have to do things on a massive scale.20 Of course the war Jonathan Derbyshire’, economy is one of these major social-structural forces that we must con- lecture presented at front, because the war economy, the imperialist-capitalist framework, as Central Saint Martin’s, London, 12 June 2012, Rosa Luxemburg explained a long time ago, is one of the ways that capit- available at http://www. alism overcomes its crises of accumulation, by forcing open new markets. youtube.com/watch?v= Since at least World War II, the war economy has become a way to hvWkWYHmMxg, accessed 15 September sustain economic growth, and, of course, this growth today is directly 2013 connected to the environmental crisis. So I would emphasize how in the  133 last decade or so there has been a resurgence of specifically leftist formu- lations of society and politics, and that these tendencies have a bearing on aesthetic articulation. KW Well, I still don’t understand what kind of communism is being employed or suggested, directly or indirectly – a new type of commun- ism, which is maybe what someone like Henri Lefebvre had in mind. MJL Yes, absolutely, Lefebvre’s idea of the ‘right to the city’ is an impor- tant reference point for someone like David Harvey, who in his recent book Rebel Cities describes the demand by the new urban classes for life to be less alienated, less an empty signifier for reckless speculation and capitalist development, less an informal space of precarious working conditions, less a screen for programmed leisure and spectacle, and more a living process in which revolutionary impulses are animated Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 by visions of a better life.21 Think of the ‘movements of the squares’ that we’ve seen everywhere since 2011. KW But as defined by Lefebvre, these are very discursive forms in which agonism plays an important role. So the communism that is here pro- posed has to be one that would be going even further than Lefebvre’s concept of socialism, or at least not backwards, so in that way maybe even Parliament needs this kind of discursive democratic project, even if great global things are to be done. But of course I’m nervous about those kinds of total projects that are somehow attached to the need for a new communism, because it will bring back the fear of totalitarianism – an invention of Benito Mussolini. I don’t know if this is really a project, because the communism that was presented by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was not yet practically clear. The Communist Manifesto intelli- gently tried to dispel the fears that were related to communism, and especially the idea of the abolition of private property, but the project was at that time only very general. MJL Yes, both utopian and critical of utopianism. KW Yes, but of course Lenin tried to make it practical, practically-dialec- tically moving forward, not for better but for worse, as we know now. So I don’t know what Badiou is proposing. Do you know? MJL Well, he’s proposing a certain philosophical model of subjectivity, on the one hand, an ontology that is influenced by Lacanian psychoana- lysis as well as set theory, and that is linked, in topological terms, to what he refers to as different truth procedures, which are developed in terms of his understanding of what an ‘event’ is – communism being an event within the category of a political truth procedure, and so not all political 21. David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to movements, for example identity politics – which is proposed by the City to the Urban Mouffe’s radical democracy – not all of these qualify as political truth Revolution, Verso, procedures, in part because they are not generic and do not affect every- London, 2012 one universally.22 The new communism, whatever it is to become, would 22. See Bruno Bosteels, Badiou not, as you say, move backwards, but it would also not dissolve every- and Politics, Duke University Press, Durham, thing that was achieved by the left. Badiou has been exceptional in this North Carolina, 2011. regard in advancing a radical leftist theory that is critical of democratic  134 discourse and its world of free markets, which is not a space of ‘lived- through experience’, as you mention in relation to Peter Bu¨rger. And through l’Organisation politique Badiou did a great deal to advance the rights of immigrants and sans papiers, which was a way for him to main- tain the Maoist emphasis on the need for organization and, through mili- tant research, to identify concrete solutions to social problems – and so to organize around problems as a way to be effective, but in forms that are not premised on state power. Of course Badiou has also discussed art in terms of truth procedure and in terms of what kinds of activism are possible today.23 Some of what he says, which resonates with what we have discussed so far, is his assertion that activist art is an art that is oriented towards a ‘presen- tation’ and not ‘the representative glorification of the results’, because, as he says, ‘there are no results at the moment’.24 An art of presentation is a kind of action art or socially engaged art which is about doing something Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 to bring about social change, as opposed to an art of representation, or even a cultural politics of representation, which assumes that what we are working for is already there, say, in terms of identities or vested inter- ests – bodies and languages. KW This is what Atelier Van Lieshout would call ‘solvism’ – presen- tation, rather than representation – autonomy related to solving things and moving ahead. There is an aesthetics in that, of course, a design aes- thetic. And this is not on a political party level; it’s on a social movement level, perhaps even micro-level of social movements, or temporary social 23. Alain Badiou, Handbook movements. This is very much what interests me, but when we move into of Inaesthetics, Alberto major cultural projects like the abolition of war, then I don’t know how Toscano, trans, Stanford University Press, Stanford, those methodologies can be effective on a larger scale. Will it happen California, 2005 automatically or is it protest that will overdetermine and shift things sud- 24. Alain Badiou, ‘Does the denly? How is it going to happen? With Mouffe it’s not through consen- Notion of Activist Art Still sus or liberal agreement, or compromise; it has to be a shift of paradigm. Have Meaning?’, lecture So we have to change the conditions that produce unhappiness, but we presented at the Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York have to be careful with this new communism so that it doesn’t become City, 13 October 2010, in once again a new religion. collaboration with Lacanian Ink MJL Perhaps one of the most serious challenges to the concept of agonism 25. See in particular Slavoj has been Slavoj Zˇizˇek’s argument that Laclau and Mouffe leave the space Zˇizˇek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent of the universal empty because they have as yet failed to renounce liberal Centre of Political democratic capitalism as the only viable political order.25 Z ˇ izˇek’s Revo- Ontology, Verso, London, 1999; Zˇizˇek, ‘Class lution at the Gates would remind us that Lenin’s act was not performed Struggle or in an empty space.26 I tend to refer to today’s left as a ‘post-traumatic Postmodernism? Yes, left’, exhausted by its experience in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Please!’, in Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj much of what is valuable gets systematically left out. Zˇizˇek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: KW One way to live through trauma is to go through the work of memory Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, Verso, and ‘work through’ the ills, the wounds and the damage that was done by London, 2000, pp 90 – those who acted in the name of communism. So, yes, it’s important to 135. bring it back as well, and quickly, so that it’s clear that those who are 26. Slavoj Zˇizˇek, ed, talking about communism are in fact healing themselves from all of the Revolution at the Gates: trauma that is attached to this word – spelling it out by saying it publicly, Zˇizˇek on Lenin, The 1917 Writings, Verso, London, and finding an emotional form for it. So I would like to hear this more 2002 from people like Zˇizˇek as well.  135 MJL Well, you know, Zˇizˇek says this too, that Marxists have to be more knowledgeable about Stalinism than anyone else, so that we can under- stand that experience, and he has written about Stalinism in many places, including, for instance, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?27 KW One thing to bring back, which is a certain aspect of the avant-garde – the one that I like – is a sense of humour. When you look at Bertolt Brecht, for instance – and maybe some of Zˇizˇek’s writings, or Marx’s, for that matter – there is a sense of humour there that is very important because it brings a form for contradictions. Laughter, Walter Benjamin has said, going back to Denis Diderot, is a condition for thinking. Laughter surfaces what we embody through our upbringing and culture – the systems of belief that are circulating in us come out with laughter and help us see our- selves. I think humour is one of the avant-garde techniques that is worth preserving. There is artistry to this kind of humour – allegorical, explosive Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 humour like that of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin – that one finds in the historical avant-gardes, as, for instance, when Duchamp and other artists, during World War I, took over this little Arc de Triomphe in Washington Square Park, to form an Independent Republic. That was an avant-garde act that was both brave and humorous. Or when Atelier Van Lieshout does this with their independent republic in Rotterdam – it’s not only what is being said but it’s something that we can enjoy, through a mockery of the world around us, as a counterpoint to the so- called well-organized society around it. So this artistic responsibility carried the capacity to find a form that could help us to recognize contra- dictions and transmit them, to make people laugh. Or, for instance, in the Hirschhorn project, the residents of the Forest Housing Project are philosophers and they learned a lot in six months and learned to see themselves from a different perspective. But there is also a sense of humour in this, in the reversal of roles, or in the playing of roles, showing that they are in fact roles. They are giving us lectures and we’re sitting there, intellectuals from Manhattan and my students from Harvard, learning from them. When the roles are changed we see the older roles more clearly. The division of labour was overturned to the point of absurd- ity, so that was a moment to laugh rather than telling so-called fundamental truths. So there was displacement there, not only placement – there was presentation and also there was deconstruction and destruction going on. Projects like this create conditions for people to become artists, and for a moment take some chunks of the symbolic environment and displace the fixed meanings that are attached to it. So the issue is how to do it in developmental ways, with projects that help people to become artists in their own right. This is not to take for granted what those people 27. Slavoj Zˇizˇek, Did already do but to create a new opportunity for people to advance in Somebody Say terms of their aesthetics, or in terms of the complexity of what they Totalitarianism? Five want to transmit and how they want to transmit it. The issue is how to Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion, do it long enough so that things that are difficult can be articulated, so Verso, London, 2002 that the issues that are unexpected or unsolicited, the experiences that 28. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Theatre for are not acknowledged can bring forward critical meaning. This means Pleasure or Theatre for combining entertainment with instruction. Here I’m on the side of Instruction’, in Brecht on Brecht and his notion of a ‘Theatre for Pleasure, and Theatre for Instruc- Theatre, John Willett, trans, Methuen, London, tion’, which I could see happening at Hirschhorn’s Monument, whether 1964, pp 71 –72 that was intended or not.28  136 Krzysztof Wodiczko is Professor of Art, Design and the Public Domain at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is renowned for his large- scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than eighty such public projections internationally and has also designed nomadic instruments and vehicles with homeless, immigrant and veteran operators. He has had many retrospectives and has exhibited at Documenta and the Paris, Sydney, Lyon, Venice, Whitney, and Kyoto Biennales. His work has been the subject of numer- ous publications, including Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Inter- views (1999), Krzysztof Wodiczko: Guests (2009) and City of Refuge: A 9/11 Memorial (2010), Krzysztof Wodiczko (2011) and Abolition of War (2011). Marc James Le´ger is an artist and writer living in Montreal. He has pub- lished numerous essays, including pieces in Afterimage, Art Journal, C Downloaded by [Marc James Léger] at 06:20 01 April 2014 Magazine, Etc, FUSE, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Left Curve, Parachute, RACAR and Third Text. He is author of Brave New Avant Garde (2012) and The Neoliberal Undead (2013), both published by Zero Books, and is editor of Culture and Contestation in the New Century (2011) as well as the forthcoming The Idea of the Avant Garde – And What It Means Today.